Happy Poetry Month... To celebrate this year, BGA will be hosting a Poetry and Spoken Word Contest. All students are encouraged to submit an original piece.
- Pieces will be selected to be shared with the school
- Best Middle School and High School submissions will be selected as BGA's Poet Laureates!
- Submissions can be any style of poetry and summited in any format (written, video, image)
Feel free to send questions to Ms. Zeng at jzeng@bostongreenacademy.org
When creating your own poems, some things to think about...
Know what your goal is for your poem. Are you trying to convey a story? An idea? An emotion? Decide on this purpose and make sure your poem communicates this to the reader.
Write about something that is meaningful to you. Focusing on a topic that is important to you will help the poem to convey authentic emotion
Think about the imagery. Try incorporating the 5 senses into your writing to really help your reader experience and connect with your writing (think about more than what the scene would look like, but also how it would sound, smell, taste, and feel to be there)
Try using a variety of strong verbs, focused adjectives, and similes/metaphors to make your writing more engaging to the reader("the girl ran across the grassy field" vs. "the girl raced through an ocean of green grass, swimming with sunbursts of dandelions")
Poems do not need to rhyme, they can... but not all do. You can also consider alliteration (...a silvery snake slithering...) and assonance (...go slow over the road...)
Not feeling the traditional verse? Poetry comes in all different formats:
Found/Blackout Poems
Using old newspaper or book pages to create a poem by removing the unwanted words until all you have left is your poem.
Poems that combine visuals and words to create he work. Often this may look like an outline of an object that connects to the poem, but is not limited to this.
Poetry intended for performance. "Spoken word can encompass or contain elements of rap, hip-hop, storytelling, theater, and jazz, rock, blues, and folk music." (poetryfoundation.org)
A form of artistic expression that does not have a specific rhythm or rhyme, or other poetry rule.
Acrostic Poem
Uses all the letters in a word or name as the first letter of each line of the poem.
Golden Shovel
Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire. Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem, keeping the words in order. Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).
Question... is rap a type of poetry?
Check out this article from The New York Times on this topic: Freeflow
(Also for the point of this contest.. yes, it counts)
Need inspiration? Check out these amazing Poets:
Amanda Gorman
She was named the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2017, at the age of 19
Became the Youngest presidential inauguration poet in U.S. History, in 2021, at the age of 22. She recited her poem "The Hill We Climb" at President Biden's inauguration
Learn more about Amanda Gorman at https://www.theamandagorman.com/
Meera Dasgupta
2020 National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. Receiving this honor at the age of 16, she is the youngest National Youth Poet Laureate to date!
Learn more about Meera Dasgupta and other National Youth Poet Laureates at https://www.youthlaureate.org/national-youth-poet-laureate
Elizabeth Acevedo
New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Awar
Learn more about Elizabeth Acevedo at http://www.acevedowrites.com/